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The one where I suddenly re-appear after 14 months

See what I did there? I substituted my name in Eminem’s lyrics because Shady rhymes with Sadie. That’s gotta be a pretty cute way to apologise for the fact I’ve been AWOL for 14 months, right?

Okay let me try this again. I want to start by sincerely thanking those of you who reached out to me in my absence. I didn’t receive the messages until I reinstalled the wordpress app on my phone but I was overwhelmed and very grateful when I read them.

Thank you to all of you who still thought of me and worried about me. You are truly wonderful people. I have spent the past few days catching up on all that has happened in your lives and I hope to reconnect with you all soon.

Secondly and most importantly I want to acknowledge that I am okay. I am here. I am surviving. I am still living my life.

I know I don’t need to give you a reason as to why I suddenly disappeared from my blog, but I feel I owe you an explanation anyway. I was in a very dark place mentally last September and I realised that my blog was actually contributing to my depression and anxiety rather than alleviating it. So I made the decision to delete wordpress from my phone and stop logging into the site on my computer. I left wordpress cold turkey and never planned to return.

Around the time I disappeared I started receiving very long and detailed comments and messages from strangers basically telling me I was a cry baby and I needed to suck it up and get over the fact my husband had left me because I was just becoming sad and bitter and nobody ought to feel sorry for me anymore.

I would read those messages and cry until I had no tears left. It made me feel like an absolute failure as a human because I clearly wasn’t capable of moving on when everyone else was sick of hearing about my sob story.

But now I realise that they were absolutely wrong to write those things. I’m stronger now and capable of seeing the bigger picture. At the time I stopped writing in my blog, my husband had only left me nine weeks earlier. Nine weeks.

What kind of sicko gets over the breakdown of their much-wanted marriage in just nine weeks? I would actually go as far as to say that people should have been more concerned if I was completely over my husband after nine weeks, not the other way around.

I went and saw a therapist and also spoke to my doctor. Neither of them agreed to supply me with anti-depressants because they both said they were very pleased with how well I was coping and were actually impressed by my progress rather than worried about it. My doctor said as a general rule they give patients in multiple trauma situations such as myself (I was still grieving my last miscarriage when Doug left me) 12 months to see a marked improvement before they begin to worry.

My therapist told me that despite losing my baby, my husband, my friends and my house I was bright eyed and alert. Able to hold eye contact and make conversation. Still capable of logic and reasoning. She said the biggest red flag for her was that I was actually coping so well. Not that I was in any kind of emotional danger.

And I just wanted to clear that up for everybody. I’m not suggesting anyone in this community deliberately set out to hurt me, and I know it’s very easy to say “get over your divorce because I got over mine” but when you’re living those dark days and going through the lowest of the lows and trying to desperately claw your way back up the steep emotional cliffs towards recovery and life after marriage, I think it’s easier said than done. I was doing the best I could and I won’t apologise for that.

Okay. Now that’s covered let’s move on shall we?

I suppose I should give you all an overview of what’s been happening in my life these past 14 months. The short answer is: a lot.

But I think before I can get to all the interesting stuff, I need to clear through the boring stuff and explain what happened in my marriage. I don’t want you guys to think this is me bitching and moaning about my relationship breakdown that I never recovered from, because it’s not. I’m simply telling you guys the gossip. I mean as if you don’t want to know what happened, right?

The most important detail I should probably share is that my divorce has been finalised. It’s ended up being a very surreal situation. Can you believe I have not actually seen my ex or spoken to him on the phone since he left me in July of last year? I have not seen his face or heard his voice for well over a year. After that night when he walked out and left me crying on the floor, he never wanted anything more to do with me. He never once came back to check I was okay. I did end up engaging a lawyer, and the whole divorce was organised via email and other correspondence through third parties.

The whole process was absolutely terrifying and expensive and I just wasn’t able to cope. Despite the fact the lawyer told me I was entitled to at least 65-70% of our shared assets, I settled for a 50/50 split and just let the rest go. It wasn’t worth fighting for. It left me in debt but at least I was free.

We ended up selling my precious house in January of this year. It was only partially renovated when Doug left, so my parents came over and helped me to finish painting and renovating. My ex never once offered to help or pay for materials.

Then when the house didn’t sell straight away he sent an abusive message to my realtor accusing me of sabotaging the sale because I hadn’t done a good enough job with the renovations. He also said I should have set up the spare rooms as kids rooms to make it look like a proper family home. Honest to God. What did he want me to do? Go out and buy a nursery set that I would never ever get to use because he’d robbed me of the chance to have a family? I mean seriously. Get real.

My ex also sent some really odd correspondence through to my lawyer, including one letter stating that I was able to use our frozen embryo at a time “of my convenience” but if that embryo resulted in a pregnancy I was to re-engage through the lawyer at 6 months gestation because my ex wanted full control of the birth plan and also custody.

My lawyer actually phoned me up laughing hysterically because he’d never heard of something so insane before. He couldn’t believe my ex was so delusional he thought a judge in a court room would actually give control of a woman’s body to her ex. I mean what kind of control did he want over my birth plan? Did he want to tell me what music to listen to in the delivery room? Whether I could have an epidural or a natural birth? Did he want to control whether I had a midwife in the room? What hospital I went to? And don’t even get me started on custody. Why would I realise a miracle by finally having a desperately wanted child, only to hand it straight over to him?? I wasn’t his surrogate…

In the end I sent him a passionate plea via text message asking him to stop being cruel and just give the embryo to me. He didn’t want it or need it. It was low quality and had very little chance of implantation. I was facing a life without children, whereas he was free to have kids with whoever he wanted. I even said I didn’t want to use the embryo and I was happy to leave it frozen indefinitely and pay for storage costs myself. But he never responded.

In fact, he stopped responding to my texts back in January. Even when I texted him to let him know he’d left money in our joint bank account he didn’t respond to thank me. He just withdrew the money and closed the account. The bank manager told me I was crazy and should have simply kept the money for myself seen as I was his wife and he’d abandoned it. But no, I did the right thing and he didn’t even bother to thank me. And now that I’m wiser and stronger I realise that’s a shortcoming with him and not me. I no longer let myself feel bad for the deficits in his personality.

It’s weird because my life has moved on in so many ways. I mean that’s what happens isn’t it? Life moves on whether you want it to or not. I spent months willing my life to be over, or to go back to how it was. But in the end I’ve come so very far. In 14 months my life is completely different.

And yet I still wait for him to message me. Not often, just sometimes. Mostly special occasions. I waited for him to text me on Christmas Day but he didn’t. I thought for sure he would message me on Mother’s Day, but he didn’t. I kept checking my phone on my birthday but received no word from him.

You guys I get it. He’s gone. He’s done with me. And I’m done with him too. But I guess there’s still that little part of me that holds on. This little voice in my head that wonders if he still thinks about me. Wonders if he’s ever been tempted to contact me. It’s because I’m a hopeless romantic and I always believed my marriage was forever. It’s because I truly loved him and never thought he wouldn’t be with me. And it’s okay to feel those fleeting emotions of sadness and longing. It’s okay to miss him. Nobody can tell me that I’m not allowed to miss him.

I want to stress to you that I’m different now. Back in September 2014 when I left this blog, I would spend 90% of my day missing him and desperately wishing he would come home, and the other 10% coping by convincing myself he was dead. Now my mind is in a very different place.

I still think of Doug on a daily basis, but the feelings have changed. Often my thoughts are triggered by external elements now. I think of him when his favourite song comes on the radio. I think of him when someone asks me about my marriage. I think of him when I see a child with hair the same colour red as his and imagine that’s what our child would have looked like.

But I don’t cry anymore. Well…very rarely. I don’t often long for him. I can think of him without missing him. I can talk about him without getting emotional. I have accepted the fact I will always kind of sort of love him. I have accepted the fact he is gone. I have come to terms with the fact I will never get closure about why he left me.

This blog post is actually the most time I’ve spent thinking about him in months. It’s very refreshing to admit that.

Well…except for an occasion in July when I very badly had the flu and my period at the same time. I phoned my mother sobbing and telling her that I needed Doug because I couldn’t cope without him anymore. I simply couldn’t survive any longer and needed him back.

And she reminded me I was okay, and that I was hormonal, and that everybody feels crappy and cries sometimes when they are sick, and that it was okay to miss him but the feeling would pass. And she was right. I got over that flu and I was so very glad I hadn’t actually tried to contact him. Because…ugh.

Honestly you guys I have so much more to tell you. I feel like I’ve just waded through all the bullshit of the past year in this blog post and now I can finally tell you all the good stuff. The exciting stuff. So much in my life has changed. Some of it for the worst but most for the better. I’m still single but I’m filling the voids in my life now. Making progress. Finding a new version of myself.

But this blog post is already ridiculously long and I don’t want to bombard you. If I promise to come back tomorrow will you guys give me some time to regroup? Nobody yell at me because I spent an entire post being a sad-sack and writing about my ex, okay? I mean it!

Thank you Sadie..while I’m terrified (the pain of loss never goes away) I’m excited that maybe I will get to keep this one. I’m just so happy to hear from you though! I can’t wait to read your updates and I’m so glad you’re okay!!! No, really.. You have no idea how much I worried about you. 💜

What a great update! I cannot believe people just told you to get over it…this is supposed to be a place where you can freely express your feelings and have 500% support from us. But, I am so happy for you and how far you have come! You are one strong woman… I’m not sure if I would be that strong if my hubby decide to walk out that door and never return. Marriage IS supposed to be forever; so I get it!
Also, you sort of left me hanging.. I was getting excited to read about all the good stuff!! Ahhhhhh looking forward to your next post! 😁😍

Sadie!!!!!! I am SO, SO happy to hear from you!!! You sound wonderful and I’m thrilled that you’ve filled us in….and can’t wait to hear more. I’ve thought about you a lot and am just so glad you’re back…no leaving us for another year ok?!? You have lots of people that care about ya! Keep in touch love and keep us posted! xoxo

So glad to hear from you. I have been keeping an eye on your blog hoping for an update – I am so glad to read that you put you first and took steps you needed to start the healing process.
As for the haters – f*ck them! I love that you are standing up for yourself and even more that you can say “your hateful words are a reflection of YOU, not me.” Bravo, Sadie, you are fighting the good fight brilliantly xx

You have no idea how happy I am to read this post!! You’re alive! I thought of you and prayed just a couple days ago… I’ve thought of you many times since you disappeared. I have prayed for you often. My heart just went out to you after Doug left and I read those comments from ppl saying you should move on… crazy!! You guys went through everything together for years! You don’t just walk away from that and forget overnight!!! I’m glad you’re back and doing well. I can’t wait to read your next post. 🙂